You and your team are invited to join us on Saturday, November 10th for the first annual Souderton Decathlon Open, presented by Xathlon. It has been a project of ours for a while to try and put together a competition that would help to bring together and grow more of the Academic Decathlon community in this section of the country, and it’s going to happen!

The event will be held at Souderton Area High School, which is approximately 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The competition will be held in our auditorium, which seats approximately 600 students. We will be using Easy Benchmark tests provided by Xathlon, an Academic Decathlon test production company out of Arizona. Unlike traditional USAD scrimmages, teams will get to take their tests, a copy of the answer keys, and graded ScanTron forms home with them along with the score report. Xathlon has partnered specifically with this competition because they also believe in growing the Academic Decathlon community through easy-access competitions. (I am aware of the weird conflict of posting on a DemiDec forum, so if I'm banned, I'm banned XD)

This event will be objective tests only, and will be scored by GradeMaster (ScanTron) forms – no clickers. Teams will get immediate results packets following the event. Individual event medals and team plaques for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place will be awarded. In the interest of time and anticipated travel needs for teams, we will NOT be having a Super Quiz Relay. If there are more than 10 schools competing, we will have a Large and a Small School division for medals and plaques. All USAD rules apply regarding dress code for arena testing and calculators.

This is a scrimmage event, and Eastern PA scrimmages are relatively informal in nature. We keep in mind that many Decathletes are learning the program, so we like to let our hair down and really concentrate on creating a friendly atmosphere that is low-risk in nature with the opportunity for students and coaches to network and make a few new friends. With this in mind, GPA divisions for this event are on the honor system. We want to be able to run this competition for years to come with a low barrier to entry. We will not be collecting GPA forms or verifying transcripts for this event.Most importantly, this is a FREE TO COMPETE event. The only cost to you is getting your team here. If there is substantial initial interest from teams traveling from distance, we will work with our two local hotels – Holiday Inn and Marriott in Towamencin, PA – to put together a group discount. We will be ordering pizzas for lunch and reserving meal tickets for $5.00 a person for those who wish to have pizza.

Registering for the event is simple – click the link to be taken to a Google Form, or go to the Eastern PA Academic Decathlon Facebook page and find a link there. In early October, you will be asked to confirm your participation as a school, and in late October, be asked to submit a list of students and divisions that will be participating. You may bring as many students as you like.

Please do not hesitate to contact any of us for more information or how we can help facilitate your school’s participation in this event!

9 teams made it out to Souderton yesterday (okay, I guess technically 8 since most of the Souderton team was already in Souderton, by virtue of them living there, but you know) to compete using the Xathlon Easy tests, courtesy of Nick Synodis (whose presence was missed!)! We had seven schools from across Pennsylvania and the top two teams from Ohio joining us, which was lovely.